1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the identification of software developers by tagging newly created or modified lines of source code with developer contact information.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a global economy the development of software is a national and international business. While this global economy is good for software development it is a challenge for software testers and software maintainers. For example, suppose a particular software application has been in production for one year and crashes, the system automatically generates a debug log including a stack trace. The stack trace is returned to a software maintainer, the software maintainer may not have worked on or developed the program but quickly pinpoints the problem to a function named “GetTables.”
Suppose that the software maintainer can see that a buffer overflow occurred, and a fix would be to increase the buffer size. However, suppose a comment in the function says the buffer size must be less than 1000 bytes.
It would be advantageous for the software maintainer to discuss the error and the comment regarding the buffer size, but there is no information regarding the comment who wrote the comment or the line of source code. Consequently, the software maintainer must either change the code in contradiction of the comment or contact multiple other departments or developers in search of one who can provide further background on the comment and the particular line of source code. Either option is not the preferred option as contradicting the comment may lead to additional errors and searching for a developer with the needed background information is time consuming and tedious.
An embodiment of the present invention provides a way to capture information about a developer of a line of source code such as a contact address, name, email address and other appropriate contact information for one or more of the last developers that modified the line of source code. Thus providing a way for the code maintainer or test team to discuss their findings and to discuss the proposed solution with the developer or development team. This would be a benefit to the test team and to the organization because it reduces the risk of introducing new errors into the system due to a lack of knowledge about the code.
A conventional tools do not automatically tags new or modified lines of source code. In conventional tools a developer must manually insert their contact information by way of a comment in the source code. However, these comments are removed when the source code is compiled and so are not available when the application is being debugged. Conventional tools do not automatically tags each line of code with developer information. Additionally, conventional tools do not automatically track the last “n” number of developers. Finally, conventional tools do not encode the developer contact information to protect privacy.
The need exists for a solution that automatically tags new and modified lines of source code. A solution that does not require the developer to manually include text contact information. A solution that encodes the developer contact information and a solution that can keep a history of the developers on a line-by-line bases.